Eight Killed in Crush at Cameroon Soccer Match

At least eight people were killed (including two children) and 38 injured in a crush outside an Africa Cup of Nations football match in Cameroon.  Videos showed screaming fans being crushed at an entry gate to the Paul Biya stadium in the capital Yaounde.

Witnesses described chaotic scenes outside the ground as thousands of fans struggled to get access. Two children, aged six and 14, are among the dead, and seven people were seriously injured.

Cameroonian President Paul Biya ordered an investigation into the "tragic incident". The Confederation of African Football (CAF) has also launched its own investigation.  Officials said about 50,000 people tried to attend the match.  The stadium has a capacity of 60,000 but it was not meant to be more than 80% full for the game because of COVID restrictions.

Nick Cavell, a producer for BBC Africa, was at the match and says news of the crush did not seem to filter through to the crowd until there were reports on social media.  Images on social media show fans clambering over fences, rushing past checkpoints and trampling on unconscious supporters. Others show some trying to resuscitate their fellow fans.

Danish journalist Buster Emil Kirchner described seeing "a lot of chaos" as fans clamored to enter the ground through a single open gate.  "It was hectic - people running, people climbing fences, people breaking through the barricades," he told the BBC.

Another journalist, Leocadia Bongben, saw a commotion coming from one of the fan zone areas outside the stadium.  "People started shouting," she told the BBC's Newsday programme. "A minute after that an ambulance came to the stadium, but when we got to the place the police would not allow us to get close to where the stampede was.  "It's really quite a sad situation that people go to watch a game and they end up dying there."

 

China Steps Up Suppression of Tianenmen Commemorations

One of the last public memorials in Hong Kong to those killed in the Tiananmen protests has been covered up.  The calligraphy-- painted on the pavement of a bridge-- paid tribute to the pro-democracy protesters killed by Chinese authorities in Beijing in 1989.

It was covered with metal by the University of Hong Kong, which called the work routine maintenance.  But its removal comes as Beijing has increasingly been cracking down on political dissent in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong used to be one of few places in China that allowed public commemoration of the Tiananmen protests - a highly sensitive topic in the country.  The Tiananmen Square massacre came amid large-scale demonstrations calling for greater political freedoms.  At the height of the protests, about one million people assembled in the Square, but in June 1989 the military moved in and troops opened fire.  The Chinese government claim that 200 civilians and several dozen security personnel died - but it is widely accepted that thousands died, with several thousand more wounded.

The image that China wants people to forget

 

Since China began tightening its grip over Hong Kong, it has cleared the city of criticism of the ruling Communist party.  Last month, a famous statue at the University of Hong Kong - the Pillar of Shame - was removed. The following day, two more universities in the city took down monuments.

The latest memorial to be taken down is calligraphy painted on a pavement on Swire Bridge outside a university dormitory.  The slogan celebrated martyrs it said were slaughtered in cold blood, and every year students would repaint it in an act of remembrance. But construction workers were seen covering up the words.  The university gave no explanation, merely saying it had carried out routine maintenance. 

Earlier this month, a pro-democracy Hong Kong activist was jailed for organizing a vigil to commemorate the Tiananmen Square crackdown.  Hong Kong authorities have banned the vigil for the past two years, citing Covid restrictions - though it is widely believed that local officials have bowed to pressure from Beijing in advance of the Winter Olympics.

 

El Salvador Journalists Hacked with Israeli Spyware

Dozens of journalists and activists in El Salvador have had their phones hacked with the spyware Pegasus, which has been used by governments to monitor critics and dissidents.  Researchers said most of those targeted work at the El Faro news outlet, which has reported on alleged secret talks between the government and gangs.

They could not prove who was behind the hack, but said evidence pointed to government involvement.  The government has denied this.  Pegasus, which was designed by the Israeli company NSO Group, infects iPhones and Android devices, allowing operators to extract messages, photos and emails, record calls and secretly activate microphones and cameras.  The spyware can be surreptitiously installed via SMS text, WhatsApp, iMessage or remotely via Bluetooth.  

The investigation into the El Salvador hack was carried out by the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab and digital rights group Access Now. They said they had found evidence of incursions on 37 devices belonging to 35 individuals between July 2020 and November 2021.  Those who were allegedly hacked work at three human rights groups and six news publications, and one is an independent journalist. Amnesty International's Security Lab independently confirmed the findings.

The main target was El Faro, the country's leading independent news outlet, which had 22 people hacked including reporters and editors. That amounts to more than half of its staff. The report said it had evidence that data had been stolen from many of the devices affected.

The hacks coincided with reports the outlet published about scandals involving President Nayib Bukele's administration, including allegations that the government secretly negotiated with gang leaders in prison in order to reduce the levels of crime.  The revelations also come amid an increasingly hostile environment for media and rights groups under Bukele, a populist who enjoys high approval ratings and often rails against his critics in the press.

 

Heidi Klum & Snoop Dogg - Chai Tea with Heidi

Facebook Does Little While its Platform Continues to Foster Violence Across the Globe

It's obvious at this point that Facebook seems content to continue to permit the spread of extremist disinformation and organizing on its social media platform, while paying lip service to its responsibilities and taking hollow half-measures to correct the problem—largely because its revenue stream is so powerfully dependent on the features fueling the phenomenon. Facebook’s profits, as whistleblower-provided evidence has established, are fundamentally built on creating social division and real-world strife.

Facebook's undeniable role in helping facilitate the bloody campaign by Myanmar’s military against its Rohingya minority population is already well-established. Now, a fresh report from Nick Robins-Early of Vice details how it is replicating those results in Ethiopia, where military leaders and their authoritarian supporters are unleashing genocidal violence in the midst of an ongoing civil war.

The Facebook model for engendering social chaos for profit with which we have all become familiar is on full display in Ethiopia. Just as occurred in Myanmar, the nation’s military leaders have leveraged the spread of disinformation on Facebook to encourage ethnic violence against a regional minority population and to organize lethal violence against them. And just as it has everywhere, the social media giant is exerting minimal effort to correct the abuse of its platform-- resulting in next to nothing to slow the looming genocide.

Last summer, a video went viral on Facebook showing a man telling a large crowd of people that anyone who associates with certain ethnic minorities is “the enemy.” It was re-posted multiple times before the platform removed it. The same account that called for Kassa’s arrest also appeared to celebrate the Fano, a notorious Amhara militia, for carrying out an extrajudicial killing. That post that remained online for months. Another account with over 28,000 followers posted an instructional video on how to use an AK47 with a caption that suggested every Amhara should watch it. The post has been up since April and has nearly 300,000 views. In September, a local media outlet published unproven allegations on Facebook that members of the ethnic Qimant minority were responsible for a shooting. That same day a government-aligned militia and mob attacked a Qimant village, looting and burning down homes.  Months later, the post remained on Facebook.

Facebook’s claim to hiring moderation staff in Ethiopia is pathetic. Moderation and fact-checking in Ethiopia is in fact is operated by group of volunteers who send Facebook spreadsheets of posts to investigate and frequently have to explain to FB staffers why content on their platform is dangerous.   “They completely lack context,” researcher Berhan Taye told Vice. “Every time we talk to them, they’re ask for context. That’s been a big issue—they don’t understand what’s happening in the country.”  The company also routinely ignores researchers when they point out violent or hateful content, telling them that the posts don’t violate Facebook policies.  “The reporting system is not working. The proactive technology, which is AI, doesn’t work,” Taye said.

If this sounds familiar, it should. When the Myanmar military used fake Facebook accounts to organize ethnic-cleansing violence against the Rohingya, it allowed the posts to remain online until The New York Times published an account of the platform’s culpability in the genocidal violence. An independent fact-finding commission by the United Nations Human Rights Council found that both the specific violence and the ethos that fostered it were spread readily on Facebook.

The Facebook model of engendering social chaos for profit has already had its effect in the United States, which particularly came home to roost at the Capitol on Jan. 6; the company’s own internal reports acknowledge that much of the extremism (particularly disinformation about the 2020 election) and violence, including the siege on Congress, that day was spread and organized on Facebook.

 

The Continuing Omichronicles

No Immunity From Being a Loser

In the lead-up to his NFL playoff loss this weekend, douchebag Aaron Rodgers went on another anti-vax rant that also seemed to question the 2020 election result.

“When the president of the United States says, ‘This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,’ it’s because him and his constituents, which — I don’t know how there are any if you watch any of his attempts at public speaking — but I guess he got 81 million votes,” the NFL star told ESPN before his season ended in a playoff loss to the San Francisco 49ers on Saturday.

“But when you say stuff like that, and then you have the CDC, which — how do you even trust them — but then they come out and talk about 75% of the COVID deaths have at least four comorbidities,” he continued. “And you still have this fake White House set saying that this is the pandemic of the unvaccinated. That’s not helping the conversation.”

Rodgers seem to have gotten his season off to a decent start, but after lying to reporters about his vaccination status, he caught COVID-19.  He missed a crucial game against the Kansas City Chiefs, which resulted in a loss for the Green Bay Packers, putting his team's postseason home field advantage at risk.  In December, when President Joe Biden encountered a woman wearing a Packers jacket during a visit to tornado-ravaged Kentucky, he urged her to tell Rodgers to get the vaccine.

Obviously, Rodgers’ remarks to ESPN suggest he’s still holding a grudge. And he totally missed the mark in his complaint about the CDC.  The statistic he mentioned focused on the rare deaths of people who are vaccinated and had nothing to do with coronavirus fatalities in general. The CDC study noted that among 1.2 million fully vaccinated people, 36 died after contracting COVID-19 ― and 28 of those had at least four risk factors.

Rodgers has spread misleading and false information before about the vaccine, and he’s proudly noted that he sought medical advice from podcast comedian Joe Rogan, who also has spread misinformation.

After Rodgers' loss to the 49ers, the Twitterverse wasted no time:

 

D.I.N.O.'s Ahead

Mitch McConnell Shows His True Colors

Republican Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has been spending the weekend trying to dig his way out of a hole after he made racially insensitive remarks about African American voters, 

McConnell unexpectedly showed his true colors when he said that African American voters cast ballots at similar rates to Americans-- implying that Black voters are not American and underscoring the widespread belief that Republicans in state legislatures across the country are explicitly seeking to disenfranchise Black voters.

This is not the first time that the Kentucky Senator has been accused of racism.  A descendant of a Confederate soldier and slaveholders, McConnell was seen posing in front of the flag while at a Sons of Confederate Veterans event in Kentucky in the early 1990's.

In 2017, McConnell censured Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren when she attempted to read a letter written by slain civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr.’s widow, Coretta Scott King, to highlight Jeff Sessions’ history of racism during his confirmation as Attorney General. 

At a 2015 event, McConnell also infamously said, "My party does really good with white people and I’m proud of that.”

McConnell also believes that Black history is not a significant part of American history-- once saying that the year 1619 (when enslaved Africans were first brought to the U.S. at Jamestown) was not one of the most important dates in American history.

Whatever McConnell’s beliefs about race, his refusal to support legislation that could improve the lives of many working class, poor, and middle class families— basically anyone who isn’t rich— affects Black Americans the most.

It’s no surprise he has discouraged his colleagues to pass Build Back Better in the Senate. Blocking the legislation has no material impact on his life, even though it could mean a great deal for the families the legislation would invest in.

McConnell’s wealth shields him from the urgency and pain many families have experienced these past two years, so even if his tweets never went viral, his voting record and policy failures say more than enough. 

 

The Washington Post Shows Its Eccentricity

I'm not always in sync with the diarists over at Daily Kos, but I'm in total agreement on their take of a Washington Post cover story this week that took up a sizable portion of its front page.  In that story, WaPo tells the tale of an unvaccinated Italian man—a professional chamber musician who, due to his refusal to abide by Europe's ever-growing vaccine mandates, can no longer "check into a hotel, eat at a restaurant or get coffee at a bar."  In what most people would consider a ridiculous waste of space, the WaPo provides a public service by offering a gentle and sympathetic view of the vanishing breed of over-eccentric chamber musicians.

The story is also an unintentional reminder that American anti-vax whiners have no fucking idea how pampered they are. We're in the middle of a new world war, this one against an emergent virus that has killed millions and which we probably could have stood a chance against, had a portion of humanity spent a little less time inventing new ways to be incompetent and ridiculous.   And we should pity Europe's poor chamber musicians who can't even get a measly cup of coffee without being asked to show their "Green Pass"-- the proof of vaccination required to get on public transportation, enter many buildings, or . . . get coffee.  American vaccine resisters can do pretty much whatever they want, and don't even need to wear a mask!

So it seems that "eccentric" cellist Claudio Ronco doesn't want to get vaccinated, and he has a lot of reasons for that (ranging from "hydroxychloroquine" to "alternative methods" to Nazi passport documents-- did I forget to mention that Claudio identifies as Orthodox Jew?).  But it all boils down to being an eccentric and thinking eccentric things about medical issues he knows nothing about.  Unfortunately, our front-page cellist hero lives in Venice, one of the top tourist destinations on the entire planet.  Venice has tight pandemic rules and you have to show your Green Pass to get on the city's water taxis no matter how talented or eccentric you pride yourself on being.  Our unfortunate Claudio has encountered so much difficulty getting around that he was forced to temporarily move to a home in the Italian hills where you don't need water taxis to get around.

By the way, everyone in Claudio's life is pretty damn sure he should just get vaccinated and get on with his life-- but Claudio appears to be oblivious enough not to care that he's been shedding fans and friends by the boatloads.  But because Claudio is Italian (and from Venice, no less) this is all much more artistic and sweeping and better-written than the American versions of the same story would be.  And thanks to WaPo, we get a slightly meandering story of an eccentric Italian cellist who can no longer take the water taxi through the Venetian canals-- cue the violins (oops, I mean the cellos)!

On the other hand, we get the American version of this story from the New York Times every couple of days--  except the person being profiled is typically a self-employed realtor from New West Bumblebrook who is incensed that she's not allowed into the town brewpub and who, when asked, says that it's because Bill Gates is putting nano-chips in all our medications and now has to go to the farm store to get the livestock versions of her medicine.  Doesn't sound nearly as ennui-filled or drenched-in-sunset-reds without the water taxis, does it?  I'm sure Europeans think our crowds of unmasked "Let's Go Brandon" shouters are pretty damn eccentric themselves, right?

So Italian guy doesn't want to get vaccinated and then finds out (during a WORLDWIDE PANDEMIC) that living your normal life is going to get increasingly uncomfortable if you're not willing to do the one single fucking thing that will help prevent you from dying.  But it is more than that!  Our cellist, being a cellist, wants to travel all around Europe for his concert gigs—without being vaccinated. Our cellist, being a cellist, wants to be able to gather paying crowds into chamber music places to hear chamber music things—without being vaccinated.

And he's living his current lonely and spartan life because "let's have unvaccinated traveling performers flit from city to city gathering new crowds of people in each place (during a WORLDWIDE PANDEMIC) sounds like one of the worst ideas anybody has ever had.  It is near the top of the bad idea pyramid.  Even with vaccination passports it sounds like a terrible idea that should probably just not happen until the surges stop surging-- but being allowed to do it while actively refusing to be vaccinated puts it up at the very top of that pyramid, in the place where the creepy glowing eyeball usually goes.

And the Washington Post, giving space to an eccentric eccentric who is eccentrically depressed about his eccentric life choices having consequences is sending weird signals, here. Did somebody just want to expense a trip to the Italian countryside or the Venetian canals? That can't be it-- can it?  Call me eccentric!

The Weeknd - Gasoline

British Choreographer Accused of Trans-Phobia

Last December, famed British choreographer Rosie Kay resigned from the dance company she founded in 2004.  She said she's been forced out for views on sex and gender, expressed at a dinner party in her home in August.  

The choreographer said she could not "endure this humiliation any longer" and spoke to the media about her decision to resign.  Complaints made by the dancers present at the party led to an "unfair, opaque and horrific investigation process that's still ongoing", Kay said.  In a statement, the dancers said they wanted to "set the record straight and to ensure that any dancers under the supervision of Rosie Kay do not undergo the same marginalization that we have suffered".

Kay has been making challenging, socially committed and political work for decades.  She said the event in late August was supposed to be a bonding dinner for a dance company about to perform Romeo and Juliet. She explained she had wanted to entertain dancers at her home ahead of the show's opening, after the long months of the pandemic had lowered spirits.  "We'd had no social time because of Covid," she told the BBC. "I cooked, put candles in the garden, and made a lot of effort as I wanted them to enjoy themselves." 

The dancers see it differently.  They told the BBC that she was their boss, in a position of authority, which they felt made it an "unequal situation" from the start. "It was a work environment... she abused her position of power," one company member said.  

Late into the evening, the conversation got "heated", according to Kay, as they discussed the next show she was planning, based on Virginia Woolf's Orlando-- a novel about a poet who changes from a man to a woman.  Kay believes what ensued at the dinner illustrates how women who stand up for women's rights are deliberately smeared with accusations of trans-phobia and more.

The dancers claim Kay said that "identifying as non-binary is a cop out", that "allowing trans people to take hormone blockers is creating eunuchs" and that "trans women are a danger to actual women in toilets and only want access to female toilets to commit sexual assault".   They claim, as alcohol was consumed, she crossed a line by airing her views in a hostile way.

The letter, signed by six members of the company, added: "Rosie spoke about 'the cake of rights' and stated women have fought for their slice of rights and now men pretending to be women want a portion of that slice. This is a deeply offensive analogy and due to the fact that two trans non-binary people had a seat at the table, it felt very pointed."

One of the company members said, "Initially, I was OK with her asking about why we identify as non-binary. It's OK to be a bit curious. But her repeated questioning stepped into micro-aggression territory [and] she asked people to confirm their genitalia."

These descriptions of the language she used are strongly contested by Kay. "I said, and it is correct to say, that women are losing rights to males who identify as women. These include rights to single sex spaces. This is not an analogy, it is a statement of fact, and I do not apologize for it."  

"This was a dinner in my own home, at which I was attacked by six individuals. The hostility was directed at me, and has lasted for nearly four months. I make no apology for standing up against this treatment, using the 'power' that I have earned through a 20-year career.  Other women who do not have this power, cannot stand up like I have done. This is not aimed at the dancers, but at the toxic nature of a culture that will see women lose their livelihoods for believing that sex is real.  I'm still in shock that hospitality could end with such an accusation."

After the dinner, a complaint was made to the dance company's board by some of the dancers. Kay wrote an apology to the dancers, saying in part: "I am devastated by how the night went and how much it has affected you. It was never my intention to upset you, but I see now that I did so profoundly. I am truly sorry for this."

Some of the dancers didn't feel the apology was "made with true ownership of the fact that she made trans-phobic comments. By refusing to use dancers' correct pronouns and rejecting their trans non-binary identities, Rosie is denying that a trans non-binary person can exist," they state in the letter. "This is trans phobia."

When asked by the BBC if she was trans-phobic, Rosie Kay said: "Absolutely not. I believe in sex-based protections and women's sex-based rights.  I'm not trans-phobic. I believe adults can behave and live any way they want, but I believe in the protection of women's rights.  The presence of males who may falsely say they are trans women in female toilets can cause trauma to women who have suffered sexual assault, as a significant number of women have."

"It's been absolutely terrible for my mental health," Kay went on to say. "I don't blame the dancers. Everyone is entitled to their views. But I do feel I have been put through an unfair process and those in control of the Rosie Kay Dance Company have shut down a leading female choreographer.  They decided to cancel my upcoming show, Orlando, without any discussion. But be assured, the people who have conspired to make my life so miserable over the last four months have not cancelled me. I will be back."

Iona McGuire, a non-binary dancer at the center of the row, said: "We weren't striving to cancel Rosie. I was hoping for acknowledgement of her blatant trans phobia and an apology for her constant refusal to use my correct pronouns.  I was not going out of my way to have Rosie Kay removed from the company, I wanted there to be proper acknowledgement of what had happened."

Kay denies having ever refused to use dancers' chosen pronouns and that "what the dancers mean by 'blatant trans phobia' is nothing more than a recognition that sex is biological, immutable and binary".

For some, the story will raise questions about what you can say in your own home or whether employers should be more perceptive about conversations they have with employees. For others, it might be an example of how generations are divided on the issue of trans rights, and even the nature of conversation itself.  Hopefully, the conversation can continue in beneficial way.

Omichronicles

Out-of-Touch GOP Justices Screw Over American Workers

Last week the Supreme Court ruled against COVID-19 mandates in a 6-3 vote, with all three Trump-appointed judges voting that OSHA doesn’t have the authority to regulate vaccinations.  It's OK to mandate vaccines for doctors and hospitals, though-- because even though judges have control over their own workplaces (and don't need OSHA) they still have to go to the doctor. You have to go all the way down to page 6 of the flawed ruling to see how bad the ruling is for workers.  

"The Solicitor General does not dispute that OSHA is limited to regulating ‘work-related dangers.’ She instead argues that the risk of contracting COVID–19 qualifies as such a danger. We cannot agree. Although COVID–19 is a risk that occurs in many workplaces, it is not an occupational hazard in most. COVID–19 can and does spread at home, in schools, during sporting events, and everywhere else that people gather."

In this ruling, the Supreme Court is explicitly saying that COVID-19 isn’t an “occupational hazard” because it can also occur outside the workplace. Which provides every employer and GOP administration the perfect opening to destroy safety regulations across the board. 

COVID-19 obviously is a danger that affects people “at home, in schools, during sporting events, and everywhere else that people gather.” But that doesn’t mean that it’s not also a workplace hazard. Workers might take the greatest possible precautions in their daily life, but the workplace may force them to be in a position where they have to spend an extended period of time in the company of a large number of people—and the resulting threat posed by their workplace environment can negate all the precautions they’ve taken at home.

The test the Supreme Court appears to be setting up with this ruling is that, in order to be regulated under the authority of OSHA, a hazard must be a threat that takes place in the workplace, but also one unique to the work environment. Lifting of heavy objects? That’s certainly something that people do away from the workplace. So is the use of power tools. Exposure to loud noises is something that happens in everyday life-- so why should OSHA be able to regulate that?  You can see how ludicrous the argument is.

Neither the justices (or anyone in their families) will likely ever work in a factory or a dangerous work environment-- and even if the occasion family member does, they will have the privilege to easily quit their job if needed and find a better one.  This is yet another example of how out-of-touch conservative Supreme Court justices make judgments that satisfy their "ivory tower" standards but completely ignore the reality of everyday Americans.  This explicit gutting of OSHA’s authority to regulate safety in the work environment will be will become a new baseline for anyone seeking to bypass safety requirements big and small. It’s a get-out-of-jail-free card for placing workers at risk, one that essentially eliminates authority to oversee worker health and safety. 

 

Still No Contact With Tonga; Satellites Reveal Damage

Tongans living overseas are facing an anxious wait for news of loved ones after a volcano triggered a tsunami.  The underwater volcano erupted on Saturday, about 40 miles north of the capital Nuku'alofa.

The eruption, which was heard as far away as the U.S., caused waves higher than three feet to crash into Tonga.  The authorities have not confirmed any deaths but communications are crippled, making it difficult to establish the scale of the destruction.  Tonga is virtually unreachable after a critical undersea cable connecting the Pacific islands to the outside world was severed. It may take up to two weeks to restore phone and internet lines.

But the brother of a British woman said she died after being swept away in the waves. Angela Glover, 50, was washed away while trying to save her dogs.  Both New Zealand and Australia sent surveillance flights to find out more, with New Zealand saying there had been "significant damage" along the western coast of Tongatapu, Tonga's main island.  Satellite photos of Tonga's main island (below) show no visible settlements after the eruption.

A distress signal has been detected from two small, isolated Tongan islands, the UN says.  The Ha'atafu Beach Resort on Tongatapu was "completely wiped out" and "the whole western coastline completely destroyed", according to a post on the resort's Facebook page written by contacts overseas.  The post said those living there "just managed to get to safety running through the bushes and escaping", and were "not able to save anything".

The Red Cross said even satellite phones, used by many aid agencies, had poor service due to the effects of the ash cloud. The organization estimates that up to 80,000 people may have been affected by the tsunami. Alexander Matheou, the Red Cross's regional director, said it was likely the volcanic dust and tsunami had contaminated Tonga's water supplies.  "One of the greatest needs is to provide water purification and clean drinking water," Matheou said.

Some officials have voiced concerns over relief efforts resulting in a spread of Covid in the country, which only recorded its first case in October.  "We don't want to bring in another wave - a tsunami of Covid-19," Tonga's deputy head of mission in Australia, Curtis Tu'ihalangingie, told reporters.

 

Doing the Right Thing Isn't Always Popular

Martin Luther King Jr. was a civil rights leader and an American hero. Almost every American adult (95%) believes he was an important figure in American history in CBS News polling.But it wasn't always that way.  The fight for civil rights can be unpopular at one time, and only become popular many years down the road. 

During the 1960s, King was a very divisive figure. The last Gallup poll to ask about his popularity during his lifetime, taken in 1966, found his unfavorable rating was 63%. In the middle of 1964, when Congress was in the midst of passing many landmark civil rights laws, King's favorable rating was just 44%. His unfavorable rating was 38%. When Americans were asked which three Americans they had the least respect for in a 1964 Gallup poll, King came in second at 42%. This was barely less than the 47% registered by George Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama.

Perhaps even more revealing is that a lot of White Americans thought King was doing more harm than good for the fight for civil rights. In a 1966 Harris Poll, 50% of White Americans indicated that he was hurting the Civil Rights effort. A mere 36% said he was helping.

Black Americans saw things very differently. The vast majority in 1963 thought his work for equal rights was moving at the right speed (71%) or not fast enough (21%) compared to 8% who believed it was happening too fast. In 1966, 84% of Black adults had a favorable view of him, while 4% had an unfavorable view.  

Decades after his death, it was far from a sure thing that King would be celebrated with a national holiday. In 1983, when Reagan signed legislation to establish the MLK holiday, opinion was split down the middle.  In an ABC News/Washington Post poll, 47% were in favor of the holiday vs. 48% against.

South Carolina was the last state to make Martin Luther King Day a non-optional state holiday, and that didn't happen until 2000. Arizona took a long time to make Martin Luther King's birthday a state holiday. The bill failed to pass the state legislature in 1986, and two ballot propositions failed in 1990.  The NFL decided to move the 1993 Super Bowl away from the state, as a result.

When all Americans were asked about whether they favored or opposed this move, just 25% favored it. The vast majority (63%) said they were opposed to moving the Super Bowl.  But the move by the NFL had the intended effect. Voters in Arizona passed a law in 1992 to make King's birthday a state holiday.  

In 2011, 94% of Americans had a favorable view of him in Gallup polling. This included an 89% favorable rating among those ages 65 and older. The vast majority of whom were born in 1927 or later. Among that same group in 1966, King's favorable rating was 41%.  In other words, King's now uniform popularity isn't only because older generations died out. People's minds changed. King became a lot more popular among many people who didn't like him when he was alive. 

 

Omicron Surge Leads to More Cruise Ship Mayhem

A surge in Covid infections on cruise ships is causing mayhem across the industry, leaving passengers stranded aboard ships, exacerbating staff shortages and prompting the CDC to warn US passengers against all cruise travel.

The CDC director said this week that Covid cases have increased 30-fold in just two weeks. Every one of the nearly 100 cruise ships currently carrying passengers in US waters has reported enough Covid-19 cases to merit investigation by the CDC, according to the agency’s website.

Over the holidays, passengers found themselves floating around on ships that couldn’t dock because foreign ports were turning them away or facing long, onboard quarantines before being allowed to come home, after testing positive for Covid. Dozens of cruises have been cancelled and some ports in the Caribbean and South America are turning ships away from making daily visits.

“It wasn’t the cruise we signed up for,” said Janet Silver Ghent, a Palo Alto retiree and editor who was stuck onboard a South America cruise for eight days, when ports in Chile and Argentina refused to let passengers disembark because of Covid cases.

On December 30, the CDC issued its highest travel warning, advising the public to avoid cruise ship travel even if vaccinated. The agency said, at the time, that the number of infections reported on cruise ships had jumped to 5,013 between 15-29 December – up from only 162 in the first two weeks of December.

Florida maritime attorney James Walker said that thousands of cruise ship crew members have tested positive and that many are quarantining on a handful of out-of-service ships.  “Given the number of crew members who are ill, there are significant staffing problems,” said Walker, who believes cruise lines should suspend their operations until after the Omicron surge. “For the people who pay to go on a cruise, the service isn’t there.”

 Details on the plight of cruise passengers (who should have known better than to get on a floating petri dish, quite frankly) can be found in the Guardian's lengthy piece.

 

Violent Eruption of Volcano Threatens Tonga

The U.S. and Japan have advised people on their Pacific coastlines to get away from the shore as a precaution against tsunami waves caused by a volcano eruption in the South Pacific.  The U.S. warned of strong currents and waves, and coastal flooding.

The eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haʻapai volcano was heard across the South Pacific, and eventually as far away as the U.S.   The initial eight-minute eruption was so violent that it could be heard as "loud thunder sounds" in Fiji, more than 500 miles away, according to officials in the capital, Suva.

Many parts of Tonga, whose capital is just 40 miles south of the eruption, are covered in ash and are experiencing a near-total blackout of power, phone lines and internet services. The extent of any injuries or damage is still unclear.  Social media footage showed water washing through a church and several homes, and witnesses said ash was falling over the capital, Nuku'alofa. Videos on social media showed traffic jams as people tried to flee low-lying areas by car.

One resident, Mere Taufa, said the eruption had hit as her family was preparing for dinner, and her younger brother had thought bombs were exploding nearby. Taufa said the next thing she knew, water was rushing into their home.  "You could just hear screams everywhere, people screaming for safety, for everyone to get to higher ground," she added.  The plumes of gas, smoke and ash pouring from the volcano reached 20km into the sky, Tonga Geological Services said.

Prof Shane Cronin, a volcanologist at the University of Auckland, said the eruption was one of the biggest in Tonga in the past 30 years.  "This is a pretty big event - it's one of the more significant eruptions of the last decade at least," he told the BBC.  "The most remarkable thing about it is how rapidly and violently it's spread. This one was larger, a much wider lateral spread, much more ash was produced. I expect there to be many centimeters of ash that have been deposited on Tonga."

In New Zealand, which is more than 1,400 miles away from Tonga, the National Emergency Management Agency said coastal areas on the north and east coast of the North Island could see "strong and unusual currents and unpredictable surges at the shore".  Local forecaster Weather Watch tweeted about the eruption: "The energy release is simply astonishing", adding: "Reports of people hearing the sonic booms across New Zealand."

 

Record Heatwave in Argentina Triggers Fresh Concern About Climate Change

Buenos Aires was hit by a major power outage this week that left thousands of homes without electricity amid a heatwave that has seen temperatures soar above 40ºC (104ºF), some of the highest in the world.  In other parts of the country, temperatures reached deadly levels--  up to 122 degrees in some areas.

Electricity distributors Edenor and Edesur both reported power outages as the high temperatures generated a spike in demand for energy to cool homes and businesses.

The National Electricity Regulatory Entity (ENRE) said Edenor’s power cut had affected 700,000 in the Buenos Aires area. Some 43,400 Edesur customers were left without power after failures of high-voltage lines hit two of its substations.  AySA, which provides drinking water in Buenos Aires, asked the population to optimize the use of water because the outage had also affected its purification system.

The intense heat resulted in freakish explosion of beetles in rural areas of the country  The town of Santa Isabel, in La Pampa, Argentina, was invaded by millions of brown beetles in houses, gardens and streets. 

For some it raised questions about climate change and more extreme weather. Argentina in recent years has seen unusual amounts of wild fires around its main river delta and the major Parana River drop to a nearly 80-year low water level.

The combination of rising heat and humidity is especially dangerous, as Texas A&M climate scientist Andrew Dessler explained in a Twitter thread. The human body generates heat, and at temperatures above around 82°F, the surrounding air no longer carries away enough heat to keep the body cool. The remaining options to avoid a dangerously overheating body involve air flow across the skin (for example from wind or a fan) or evaporating sweat. And as climate change draws more moisture from the soil into the atmosphere, thus increasing humidity, sweating offers less relief. At 100% relative humidity, the body can’t evaporate any sweat (hence ‘dry heat’ is less uncomfortable because of the body’s ability to cool itself by sweating).

 

Sting - If It's Love

Chinese-Built Expressway Speeds Up Erosion of Kenya's "Green City"

Rubble, bare earth and tree stumps mark the route of a super highway under construction in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, upsetting many.   Rows of indigenous trees that once lined the route of the new four-lane 16-mile Nairobi Expressway have been felled as construction nears completion.  Scores of ornamental palm trees planted after independence from British colonial rule in the 1960's have not been spared either.

A century-old fig tree targeted for removal was saved by the president after a public outcry - but campaigners' voices about the hundreds of others have been drowned out.  The devastation has already seen flocks of marabou storks and other birds that perched and nested on the trees migrate to tall buildings in the city center.

The Chinese-financed highway, some of which is elevated, will link the main airport in the east to western suburbs. It is intended to make it easier to cross the city and free other roads from Nairobi's notorious traffic jams.  Before the $550m project started last year, an official environmental impact report said that more than 4,000 young and mature trees would be cut down. It also flagged its "major negative impact" on air and water quality during construction.

In response, government officials said the Chinese contractor building it would plant trees elsewhere - five for every one felled. But those trees will not be in Nairobi - and environmentalists fear such promises may not even be kept.  Elizabeth Wathuti, of the Green Generation Initiative and Wangari Maathai Foundation, said: "The developers say: 'It's OK. We'll just plant new trees somewhere else.' But this is not OK and we know in our hearts that this is not OK. Every tree in the city counts and every tree in the city must live."

This distrust has been fueled after it came out that a section of the highway was to encroach into the city center's iconic Uhuru Park.  Nairobi's famed green space was saved in the 1990s by environmentalists, led by the late Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai, thwarting the then-ruling party's plan to build its huge HQ and shopping complex there.

Abhor-Rent Anniversary

Honduras on the Brink of a New Political Era

Former first lady of Honduras, Xiomara Castro (of the opposition Liberty and Refoundation party) won 53% of the votes in its recent presidential election and is expected to be sworn in on January 27 as the first female president of Honduras.  The Central American republic is a small country at the heart of Central America’s “triangle of death,” plagued by gangs, poverty and corruption.  

Honduras is one of Latin America’s poorest countries, with more than half of the population living below the poverty line. Their plight was made worse by the pandemic and the devastation caused by hurricanes Eta and Iota.   Its 9 million people also suffer from one of the highest murder rates in the world outside war zones.  Last year there were 37.6 recorded homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. With Mexico, Honduras is also among the most dangerous places to be a journalist, with 85 killed in the last two decades.

Alongside neighbors El Salvador and Guatemala, it forms the “triangle of death”, plagued by the murderous gangs called “maras” that control drug trafficking and organized crime. Their violence has helped trigger a wave of illegal immigration to the United States, notably by minors who fear being forced into gangs.

Large migrant caravans of thousands of Hondurans traveling north by foot have set off alarm bells in Mexico and the U.S.  In 2018 hundreds of Honduran children were separated from their parents in the US under then president Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” of illegal immigration. He abandoned the practice after a popular backlash.

Independent since 1821, Honduras has endured many coups, armed uprisings and conflicts with its neighbors, including with Guatemala in 1880 and the brief so-called Football War with El Salvador in 1969.

An almost uninterrupted period of military rule for nearly 20 years ended in 1982 with the election of President Roberto Suazo Cordova. Since then the center-right Liberal Party and right-wing National Party have fought it out for power.

Elected under the liberal banner in 2005, President Manuel Zelaya was overthrown four years later in a military coup backed by the right and the business world, after swinging to the left and cozying up to Venezuela’s late socialist leader Hugo Chavez.

Outgoing President Juan Orlando Hernandez, known as “JOH”, was first elected under the National Party banner in a disputed 2013 poll and re-elected in 2017. The opposition said the vote was rife with fraud.

Hernandez soon faced violent protests demanding that he stand down after controversial health and education decrees. His brother Tony was arrested in 2019 for trafficking 185 tons of cocaine to the U.S., and sentenced to life in prison in 2021.

Even though Hernandez supported U.S. anti-drug campaigns, traffickers caught by the U.S. claim to have paid bribes to the president’s inner circle. Hernandez strongly denied this and said drug cartels are trying to get back at him for standing against them.

 

Another COVID Winter

Details Emerge of Violent Nigeria Cult That Has Become a Global Mafia

Up until now, not much was known about Black Axe - a Nigerian mafia-style gang tied to human trafficking, internet fraud and murder.  In Nigeria, Black Axe is referred to as a "cult," a nod to their secret initiation rituals and the intense loyalty of their members. They are also infamous for extreme violence. Images of those who cross their path - dead bodies mutilated or showing signs of torture - regularly surface on Nigerian social media.

Dr. John Stone (in an BBC expose) now admits he took part in atrocities during his years as an "Axeman"-- his nickname was the "the butcher".  Today, Stone is remorseful for his past and a vocal critic of the gang he once served. He is one of a dozen Black Axe sources who have decided to break their oaths of silence and reveal their secrets to international media for the first time.  

The revelations come from the discovery of a huge cache of private communications shared among hundreds of suspected Black Axe members. The messages, which span 2009 to 2019, include communications about murder and drug smuggling. Emails detail elaborate and lucrative internet fraud. Messages plan global expansion. It was a mosaic of Black Axe criminal activity spanning four continents. 

Axemen use secret forums - password-protected websites - to share photos of recent murders in internal chat groups. In one post labelled "Hit", a man lies splayed out on the floor of a small room. There are four gashes on his head. His white T-shirt is surrounded by a pool of his own blood. The imprint of a boot, stained red, marks his back.

Within Nigeria, Black Axe is fighting a war of supremacy with rival "cults" - similar criminal gangs with names like the Eiye, the Buccaneers, the Pirates and the Maphites. Messages the BBC have translated from West African Pidgin show Axemen keeping track of how many rivals they have murdered, tallying up the figures like a football score in each region.  "Score is presently 15-2, the war is Benin," reads one post. "Hit in Anambra state. Score is Aye [Axemen] 4 and Buccaneers 2," reads another.

But internet fraud, not murder, is the primary source of revenue for the gang. The documents include receipts, bank transfers and thousands of emails showing Black Axe members collaborating on online scams around the world. Members share "formats" - blueprints on how to conduct scams - with each other. Options include romance scams, inheritance scams, real estate scams and business email scams, in which the perpetrators create email accounts that appear to be those of the victim's lawyers, or accountants, in order to intercept payments.

These scams are not small-scale, conducted by a lone wolf on a laptop. They are collaborative, organized and extremely lucrative operations, sometimes involving dozens of individuals working together across continents.  The leaked emails reveal the case of a man in California who was targeted by a network of suspected Axemen in 2010, scamming him from Italy and Nigeria. The victim admitted he was defrauded of $3 million in total. 

Black Axe's international cybercrime network is likely to be generating billions of dollars in revenue for their members. In 2017 Canadian authorities say they busted a money laundering scheme linked to the gang worth more than $5bn. Nobody knows how many similar Black Axe schemes are out there. The leaked documents show members communicating between Nigeria, the UK, Malaysia, the Gulf States, and a dozen other countries.  "It's spread all over the world," the source of the data hack told us. He says he's an anti-fraud investigator in his private life and began pursuing Black Axe after encountering a number of their scam victims.  "I would estimate there are upwards of 30,000 members," he says.  More details can be found in the BBC expose here.

Peruvian Piece Possessing Prodigious Penis Pillaged

The newly erected statue of a grinning man with an enormous dick has prompted delight and rage in an archaeological hot spot in Trujillo, Peru, where it has been on show since the beginning of the year.

 Although not anatomically correct, the fiberglass structure is a faithful representation of a ceramic vessel from Peru’s pre-Columbian Mochica culture, whose people lived in the region between 150 and 700 AD.  The statue has already proved hugely popular with passers-by and tourists who pose beneath the 5-foot member for selfies.  But despite its historical fidelity, the 9-foot tall fertility symbol has already been attacked by vandals who penetrated a hole in the statue and reportedly fired shots in the air as they fled.

Arturo Fernández Bazán, the mayor of Moche, the district named after the ancient culture, said, “At two in the morning three hooded criminals held a knife to the security guard’s neck to keep him from reacting or calling his colleagues on the radio, and two of them damaged the phallus.”

The roadside monument to the ancient pre-Inca culture renowned for its sexually explicit ceramics has also drawn tourists, as the statue stands on the route between the imposing adobe temples of the sun and the moon (the Huacas del Sol y la Luna).   Fernández Bazán said he plans to erect up to 30 more statues representing the Mochica culture – about a third of them representing erotic acts or childbirth – along the archaeological circuit.

“In our Mochica culture, these types of ceramics vessels were not considered erotic but represented the Godhead,” Fernández Bazán, who worked as a gynecologist before entering local politics, told local media.  “The Greeks had another type of representation. We have been more aggressive and more direct with our feelings,” he added.

The statue has provoked diverse reactions posted on the Moche municipality Facebook page, some saying that they found the statue offensive or that it should not be viewed by children.  Gisela Ortiz, Peru’s culture minister, said: “The idea that children shouldn’t see it or it’s too offensive belongs to the time of obscurantism,” she told reporters. “As Peruvians, we should all feel proud of our diverse heritage, including the sexual or erotic part, which is inherent to the human being.”  She added that while “nothing justifies the violence against the security guard”, greater efforts to explain the cultural significance of the statue to the local population could help avert further controversy.

 

Kristin Chenoweth - My Dear Acquaintance (a Happy New Year)

The Wisdom of Baby Yoda

Brexit: One Year On

 It will soon be the anniversary of the UK leaving the EU-- so how has the last year gone?

The year started with Brexiteers suddenly realizing the magnitude of what they voted for. The first major instance was of Leave voters living in Spain who soon found out that they couldn't watch their favourite British TV show, "Only Fools and Horses," anymore.  

Sam Allardyce, manager of West Bromwich Albion, who had admitted that he voted to leave the EU, learned that signing footballers for his team from Europe had just become doubly hard due to the extra paperwork needed for players coming from clubs in the EU. Oops!

Roger Daltrey, the lead singer of The Who, complained that the UK’s trade deal with the EU was failing UK musicians. He was one of the 110 signatories of a letter to the government that accused the government of “shamefully failing” live performers. The irony of all this? Daltrey voted to leave the EU. 

June Mummery, a former Brexit Party MEP who campaigned to leave the EU, soon discovered that the grass wasn't greener on the other side of the water. "As fishing goes, and if we want to hang on to the industry we have, because five years is a long time when you have nothing. We're on our knees. We've waited 40 years and quite frankly a lot of people will pack up, including myself. I've got no fish."

In March of last year, Tory minister Paul Scully was talking about renewable energy when he said that Brexit was "the start of building back greener. This is the start of 6,000 jobs in the UK, using British jobs, British manufacturing, and of course British wind to power UK homes.”

Brexit ushered in violence to the streets of Northern Ireland as a dispute erupted over a proposed Protocol that would have placed a de facto border in the Irish sea and enforced checks on goods being imported into Northern Ireland and Britain.  Former Labor MP Kate Hoey suggesting on GB News that NI was ‘sacrificed’ just so Brexit could happen and that the unrest seen on the streets of Derry was a consequence that many leavers already knew was going to happen.

In May of last year, there was a very real concern that the UK could end up in a military conflict with France all because of post-Brexit fishing restrictions that stopped French boats from operating in the waters surrounding Jersey. French fisherman staged a protest blocking the main St Helier port. Things were so tense that a member of the Jersey Militia reenactment group fired a musket blank at the boats.

Tim ‘Wetherspoons’ Martin (who, as one of the most vocal proponents of Brexit, exploited fears of immigrant workers to campaign to leave the EU) soon began to call for UK migration laws to be loosened for EU workers to tackle the staff shortage at pubs and restaurants.  WTF?

Tory MP, former deputy chairman of the European Research Group and the so-called ‘hard man of Brexit’ tried to take a jab at Labour leader Keir Starmer in August over his net-zero policy. However, Baker ended up with egg on his face by adding: “Politicians need to level with the public about the scale of change needed in our lives so we don’t have another political fiasco like Brexit.”  

Britons were told that everything was going to be fine and that supermarket shelves would remain as full and as replenished as ever. But come August, many shops and restaurants were struggling to meet demands as Post-Brexit immigration rules meant that many EU workers were now staying away from the UK. Even Nando’s ran out of chicken.

Possibly one of the most famous moments to come out of the truck driver shortage was this explicit condemnation from a Dutch trade union boss. On the 27th September edition of Radio 4’s Today Programme Edwin Atema bluntly said: “The EU workers we speak to will not go to the UK for a short term visa to help UK out of the shit they created themselves!” His rant predictably went viral.  

One memorable moment last year came from Mariella Gabutt, a wholesale market worker in Manchester who went viral after appearing on BBC News and sarcastically explaining how the cost of one container of fish went from £3,000 pre-Brexit to £14,000 post-Brexit.  But of course, it had nothing to do with Brexit!

The lack of truck drivers took was one of the most evident consequences of Brexit. Things didn’t get much better when the transport secretary Grant Shapps claimed that the shortages weren’t anything to do with exiting the EU and that Brexit had actually helped the situation as it had made it easier to process more driving tests.  What a tool!

In more denial of Brexit not being to blame for anything, the September petrol crisis (which saw members of the public queuing for hours at petrol stations just to fill up their cars) had apparently nothing to do with a lack of truck drivers being able to deliver the fuel. Former Tory leader and staunch Brexiteer Sir Iain Duncan Smith said that ‘brainless bureaucracy’ and Covid was actually were the actual culprits.

Trevor Noah, host of The Daily Show, went viral in October after summing up the shambles that is Brexit in just a few seconds by pointing out that people voted to leave because they were “sick of the ‘dirty foreigners’ coming in and taking their jobs and now there’s a fuel crisis - partly because ‘dirty foreigners’ are the ones driving all the dirty gasoline trucks.”

Things really started to get serious when people who actually voted for Brexit were appearing on Question Time to criticise the entire debacle and were so critical that host, Fiona Bruce was shocked to discover that the man in question, actually voted to leave.  

The post-Brexit trade deal struck with New Zealand was so negatively received, that one Kiwi broadcaster likened British farmers to ‘sacrificial lambs.’

It is bow clear that the impact of Brexit has been worse than that of COVID. According to Richard Hughes of the Office for Budget Responsibility, the toll taken on the UK’s GDP by Covid has been 2 per cent but when you add in leaving the EU that results in a further 2 per cent decline for the GDP which isn’t exactly great news, especially when one was self-inflicted and the other wasn’t.

Along with not having any truck drivers or fuel, the UK was also short ofnacademic personnel. In May the government launched a scheme to fast track Nobel laureates and other prize winners in science, engineering, humanities and medicine. Six months later the grand total of people who applied for this was zero.

Pro-Brexit Tory MP, Mark Francois released a book in December called ‘Spartan Victory: The Inside Story of the Battle for Brexit.’ It was self-published because according to Francois “it was fairly evident after a while that no publisher wanted to publish.”

 

 

Florida Governor DeathSentence Continues His Efforts Against Mask Usage

Florida's Ron DeSantis went completely MIA during an unprecedented surge of COVID-19 cases in his state-- but finally Governor "DeathSentence" held a press conference in Fort Lauderdale. He spent much of his time (as did his anti-science surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo) dismissing the usefulness of COVID-19 vaccines, downplaying the severity of symptoms of the omicron variant, and whining and complaining about how the federal government isn’t giving him the monoclonal treatment medicines. 

Miami-Dade had officially hit a 25% positivity rate, meaning one in four tests has returned positive in the last week.  Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings, who oversees the largest in the state, ripped into DeSantis Tuesday, demanding to know where the governor was and why he wasn’t offering any help.“Our residents, all Florida residents, should be outraged, and they should ask the question, ‘Where is our state? Where is our governor? Where is Ron DeSantis now?’ When is the last time you saw the governor do a press briefing on COVID-19?”

DeSantis continues to advocate for Regeneron (monoclonal antibody treatments) versus vaccinations, masks, social distancing, and virtual gatherings as prevention or as a way of minimizing illness. He repeatedly said he would open more sites to offer treatment, but only based on what the state would be provided by the federal government.   It is already well documented that Governor DeathSentence touts Regeneron (at the expense of prevention) as pay-back to a top political donor who has invested millions of dollars in the treatment.

DeSantis went on to make light of the COVID-19 cases, and again blamed the federal government for the lack of home tests, but took no responsibility for the lack of testing centers across the state.   He also continues to avoid the basic fact that the cheapest and best way to avoid COVID cases and deaths is vaccines and boosters.  According to a new study done in the U.K., COVID-19 vaccines reduce the risk of hospitalization from omicron across the board, and a booster dose provides the highest level of protection.

Surgeon General Ladapo admitted that hospitalizations weren’t nearly as high as case numbers in the state (which is likely due to vaccines and boosters) but bizarrely continued to focus on the federal government's rationing of treatment medications.  There was no talk about Florida's efforts to buy and distribute its own treatment regimens.  Ladapo spoke extensively about treatments but refused to discuss using masks or getting vaccines.

The fact is that federal data shows that Florida hospitals already have nearly 10,000 doses of Regeneron’s monoclonal antibody treatment on hand, and about 4,000 doses of Eli Lilly’s treatment. However, according to the Tampa Bay Times, those therapies have not proven to be effective against the omicron variant of the virus.

DeSantis finished the press conference declaring that Florida schools would not close and should not have mitigation efforts to prevent the spread of the virus. He railed against masks, saying “I think [people] have a right to breathe.”  How fucking stupid can you be?